Medicare For All

Having turned 65 last September I can now laze around enjoying my first entitlement from Big Government, Medicare. It definitely has sapped most of the initiative the Free Enterprise system had previously installed and I can't wait to get my social security check this coming birthday so I can stop innovating altogether. I can be a walking moral hazard, waiting for others to do things for me as I sloth around.

But seriously, for the Democratic Socialists to place Medicare for All as their priority policy position seems like an attempt to make "democratic" capitalism more bearable, rather than less. The assumption is that the masses will see that making health insurance a public provision will cause them to question other for-profit sectors, leading them to question the profit motive altogether. Then we can have some form of democratic socialism. But is there any evidence to support this hypothesis? Have social democracies in other parts of the world advanced to true worker ownership of the means of production?

I think such social provision has allowed capital to expand into new sectors and gain increased legitimacy in the mind of workers. Along with the Google-ization of the workplace (relaxed atmosphere, good wages, worker buy-in, etc) this is capital's revolutionary ability to morph and insinuate itself into every cultural and psychological niche.

So if your day is starting to go a little too well you can check out the article on global coal development and then read some of the comments people have posted. The extent to which people can pull the wool over their own eyes is truly remarkable. And along with the ideological rubble there is the total lack of agency; everyone looking to someone else to solve the problem or encouraging us to vote for the right candidate. I'm sure the folks at the Aspen Institute have a plan.